In the course of creating a media production, multiple members of a production team may work together to create a coherent product. One task in the creation of a media production is to synchronize recorded audio tracks with recorded video scenes. For example, one member of the production team may specify the scenes that need music, another member of the production team may be in charge of finding music for those scenes, another member may align the start and end of a particular music track with particular frames of a video scene, and yet another member of the production team may be in charge of reviewing the mix to decide if the result makes the final cut. In order to streamline the reviewing process, the production member in charge of finding music for scenes will often create multiple alternative tracks for the same scene, for the reviewer to decide among.
One technique used to transport the audio/video mixes to other members is to create a fixed movie file with the embedded audio and then either email the file to the intended recipient or post the fixed movie file to a file server for retrieval. Manually burning and delivering compact disks and DVDs also may be done. However, current techniques suffer from numerous deficiencies. As one example, in order to present an updated version of the mix a new fixed movie file would need to be generated and sent to the recipient. Thus, additional time is required to compile and send a slightly updated version of the mix over and over again until the reviewer is satisfied. In addition, if multiple alternative tracks need to be reviewed, a fixed movie file for each alternative track would need to be generated and sent, resulting in inefficient network and storage utilization. Furthermore, traditional media players have not been designed for editing synchronization of video and audio in a collaborative environment, and thus provide little to no tools which allow for efficient editing and commenting of synchronized media presentations.